In Twitter attack on New York Times, Trump floats changing libel laws

In another Twitter attack on The New York Times, President Donald Trump on Thursday floated whether the U.S. should change its libel laws, a threat he made as a candidate that worries First Amendment advocates and could exacerbate tensions between his administration and the press.

“The failing @nytimes has disgraced the media world,” Trump tweeted Thursday morning, sharing the link to a New York Post story critical of the Times. “Gotten me wrong for two solid years. Change libel laws?”

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With the statement, Trump continued to escalate his attacks on the news media, which he has deemed an “enemy of the people” and the “opposition party.” Among many signs of the deteriorating relationship between the president and the reporters who cover him, Trump plans to skip the upcoming White House Correspondents Dinner, and his aides recently announced that they, too, have chosen not to attend the event in “solidarity” with their media-bashing boss.

Trump’s tweet on Thursday, though, represents a major step up from declining a party invitation. It implied that he would consider using the legal system to retaliate against news coverage he dislikes, a tactic he raised when he ran for president but seemed to back away from after his election.

During the campaign, Trump suggested that he would “open up” U.S. libel laws to make it easier for people to sue news organizations, though he told Times reporters during the transition period that he had begun to rethink his position on the issue. He said he had been advised he also might get sued more under more stringent libel laws.

When he first raised it, experts noted that it would be difficult for Trump to actually follow through on changing American libel law. First, libel law is administered at the state, not the federal, level, and even if he tried to push state legislatures to make changes there, it would require getting around major Supreme Court precedent. A 1964 press freedom case outlined newspapers’ First Amendment protections and established the high bar that plaintiffs must clear to win libel cases against them.

Lee Rowland, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, said Thursday that there are virtually no steps within the president's power to "open up libel laws" as Trump has suggested.

Still, Trump’s comments on libel, coupled with his regular attacks on reporters and news organizations, have alarmed First Amendment advocates and his critics, who warned over the course of the campaign that his posture toward news organizations revealed a lack of respect for the role a free press plays in a democracy.

Those concerns have not dissipated since the election: Dozens of press freedom groups signed a joint letter earlier this month asserting that they were “alarmed by the efforts of the President and his administration to demonize and marginalize the media and to undermine their ability to inform the public about official actions and policies.”

Rowland sounded a similar note after Trump's tweet on Thursday. This kind of rhetoric, she said, could have a chilling effect on journalists or critics of the president who might start censoring themselves, because the implication is that he considers critical journalism to be unwelcome and even worthy of punishment.

"Combined with his attacks on the press, [it] should be very alarming, even if he lacks the power to do what he says he would do," Rowland said.

Trump's words carry weight worldwide now that he sits in the Oval Office, warned Carlos Lauría of the Committee to Protect Journalists, and his attitude signals to other countries that the U.S. is less committed to a free and independent press.

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As he did in his tweet on Thursday, Trump often focuses his ire on the Times, which he reportedly reads closely. The president regularly complains about the newspaper, asserting that it covers him unfairly and is a “failing” publication, even though the paper has actually reported an uptick in subscriptions since the election.

Despite his complaints, Trump also regularly grants Times journalists interviews. (Last Friday, after House Republicans failed in their attempt at a health care overhaul, Trump quickly picked up the phone and called two reporters; one of them was the Times’ Maggie Haberman.)

The Times, as it has in response to previous Twitter attacks from Trump, defended its coverage on Thursday. “We continue to be extremely proud of our coverage of the Trump administration, which has been tough and fair, as it should be,” spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said in a statement.